In schools, psycho-education is a classroom behavior management method that aims at training teachers and students about children's emotional and behavioral problems. Psycho-educational teachers believe that social-emotional growth happens when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. Psycho-educational theory and methods include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavior aspects.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Interpersonal Communication in the Classroom: How to Talk so that Your Difficult to Handle Student Listens

On this month’s blog, I share some “tricks of the trade” in
interpersonal communication so that teachers and school staff can improve
efficiency in managing students that are difficult to handle and/or
noncompliant.

1. Remain Calm

When addressing misbehavior, lower your voice and speak slower. Loud
(angry) messages are lost beneath all the noise and harsh words that accompany
them. Project self-confidence and deliver your message using a business-like
tone.

2. Stay in the Present

Do not dwell on past behavior, or
something that happened weeks earlier. Correct only behavior that is happening here and now.

3. Own Your Message

Change “You-messages” to “I-messages.”
For example, instead of saying, “You
are such a potty mouth!” say, “I feel
uneasy because I do not like being
cursed.” Do not take the child’s behavior personally.

4. Challenge the Child

When you address misbehavior, keep it simple butkeep it challenging. The simplest and most challenging message that
we can deliver to a child with recurrent behavior problems is, “Connect with the bestin you.”Focus the child on her best
qualities and in how those qualities can help in strengthening weaker
performance.

5. Accentuate and Transfer Positive Behavior

Build on what the child is doing well
already, concentrating in spreading out positive behavior to weaker areas of
performance. Simply put, let the child know that “If you can do it here, you can do it there.”

6. Use Temporal Language

Use language that communicates your
expectation that the negative behavior is going to change; it is just a matter
of when (time). For example, you would say, “In the next few days, when you are no longer feeling angry about
this…”

7. “Close” the Negative Behavior

On the other hand, talk about
negative behaviors as if they were something from a distant past, even when the
misbehavior happened just five minutes earlier. Always talk about negative
behaviors using the past tense of verbs.

8. “Open” the Child to the Possibility of Better Behavior

At the same time that you are talking
about the misbehavior as something from the past, use verbs in thefuture tense
to build positive expectations and to “open” the child’s mind (make the child
receptive) to those positive expectations. Now, you will be talking about how
things are going to be (how the behavior is going to improve) sometime in the future. However, do not
specify when; keep the “change” unstated and indefinite, so that it happens when the childfeels ready for it.

9. Always Separate the Actor (Child) from the Action (Behavior)

Make sure that the child knows that
although he does his behavior, he isnot
his behavior. To make this distinction clear to the child, you can replace
messages that label the child’s character (e.g., “You are cruel”) with messages that label actions (e.g., “You are acting
in a cruel way.”) Simply put, label the behavior, not the student.

10. Talk About Specific Actions

Use language that is specific to the
behavior, or behavior specific language.
Behavior specific language describes
what you see, hear, and can touch, staying away from inferences,
interpretations, and judgments. You can start a discussion about a particular
behavior saying something like, “Let us talk about the way you arehandling this
situation with Eric.”

11. Focus on the Child’s Goal, Not on
Yours

Your messages to the child should be
more about “Be the best you can be” (the child’s goal), and less about “Be the
way I want you to be” (your goal).

12. Focus the Child on the Goal of
Self-Discipline

Discipline is more effective and long
lasting when it is comes from within (self-discipline), rather than being
imposed by an external source such as a teacher or a parent. Help the child
identify a long-term goal, and then, break it down into easier and manageable
steps (short-term goals), so that the child experiences gradual success. Remember that nothing builds success like success;
with the long-term goal in mind, strive for self-discipline.

13. Give Choices to the Child

Ensure that the child takes responsibility
for the behavior choices she is making. The child needs to understand both that
her behavior is her choice, and that choices haveconsequences, and these consequences can be either positive or
negative. Once the child sees her behavior as her choice, you can start
building a lesson for life: “Because I am the one responsible for the choices I
make, the only person responsible for the things I do is myself.”

Related book: All Behavior is Communication:
How to Give Feedback, Criticism,and Corrections that Improve Behavior. To preview this book on Amazon, click here.

A Call to All Teachers:

Proudly announcing our new
group for educators worldwide, “We Teach the World.” Our aim is to connect
teachers and related school personnel all over the world, so that we can share
much-needed ideas, strategies, and lesson plans as well as all kinds of
resources in classroom management and in student discipline. Coordinating our
effort worldwide, we can tell each other where to find important resources and
information. If you administer a teaching blog or have created educational
resources to facilitate our job, you are welcome to share them here. As long as
they contribute to education, we want to know of your business. Teachers with
questions, post them here; mentors and seasoned teachers, your valuable
experience and unique perspective matter to us, so make your voices heard.
Because isolated, we teachers are imaginative, resourceful and resilient, but connected,
connected we are imaginative, resourceful, resilient AND powerful. To join us,
click on, “We Teach the World.”

2 comments:

Many of these ideas are very wise. You sound like you have a lot of experience with the emotional differences of kids with labels. What you are trying to do is not be a part of the problem. Many teachers don't get that. It is all about punishing behaviors. I know I didn't before I had a child who learned differently.

superb child psychology. I wish; I learn many more things from your experience and you. Being in the same profession I will definitely try to imbibe your ideology about human tendencies and behavior. I really appreciate your ideas and teachings. Thanks and will require your guidance in future too.

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Introducing "The Psycho-Educational Teacher"

Psycho-education is an enhanced behavior management approach based on the principle that, no matter how severe a behavior problem is, all children can grow socio-emotionally and can learn how to self-control behavior. Psycho-educational teachers believe that socio-emotional growth takes place when children understand the role that emotions play in their school difficulties. This therapeutic approach aims at helping children understand how their troubling feelings and emotions influence their behavior. A teacher trained in psycho-education applies skilled child guidance techniques to help children develop effective coping strategies, self-control of behavior, and social problem-solving skills. Psycho-educational principles and techniques include cognitive (thinking), affective (feelings), and behavioral aspects. This innovative blog is a must read for teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents with an interest in psycho-educational theory and methods to help children with recurrent behavior problems.